Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Eggless Coffee Walnut Cookies

Coee smeCoffee LOVE, LOVE COFFEE!! I love nuts. And these two together is one of those matches made in heaven. Like orange and dark chocolate, chocolate and nuts, coffee and cream, coffee and chocolate.

Baking cookies is something I very rarely do. If you have noticed, this is the second cookie in a year I am posting on this blog. It's not that I don't love cookies, its just the thought of rolling, cutting out the dough batch by small batch, that puts me off. If you have baked cookies in a small oven you will know what I mean. I baked cookies today after a long time and delicious ones at that! Am so happy! I made some of these Eggless Coffee Walnut Cookies which I had bookmarked from Deeba's blog(That leaves just the rest of those utterly gorgeous cakes and bakes on the uber gorgeous Passionate About Baking, left to be baked:) What an inspiring thought!!.

This recipe is a very simple and quick as it involves using butter straight out of the fridge, no creaming the butter, no rolling and cutting out cookies. And it was quite easy to make, the results... yuu..mmm...If you are someone (like me) who shies away from baking cookies for the effort involved or need a quick to put-together batch of nutty, coffee rich, aroma filled cookies, this is just the recipe for you. Thanks so much Deeba for this lovely keeper of a recipe.

This recipe is from PAB, original recipe from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert. This book supposedly has simple but sensational desserts so it gets added to my growing wish list of baking books.

Ingredients: Weigh all ingredients for best results. This is important for the best texture.

Grind the walnuts, sugar, salt, and flour together in small batches in the smallest jar of your mixer. If you have a food processor, you can fit it with a metal blade and pulse till the walnuts are finely ground. We need to grind the nuts such that is really fine but not oily or pasty, this is very important. Watch my video on grinding nuts for tips, link at the end of the post.

Take all of the flour mixture in a very large bowl or on your counter. Add the chilled butter and cut into the flour mixture (as in pie crust), I use a chilled metal dough scraper to do this and this method works well for me. You can also use a pastry blender.

It will look kind of dryish, but do not be tempted to add any liquid. The mixture will come together just fine if you have weighed your ingredients correctly. If absolutely needed, add 1 teaspoon milk.

Once all the butter is cut in, knead the mixture very briefly and gently to make it smooth.

Do not work the mixture too much or knead too much, the cookies will not be as light.

Food processor method to mix dough

Put the walnuts, flour, sugar, coffee, and salt in a food processor & pulse until walnuts are finely ground.

Add chilled butter & pulse again till breadcrumb like mixture forms.

Add the vanilla extract & pulse just until the dough begins to form clumps around the blade.

Take out and pull together to form a dough; knead briefly to make smooth.

Do not work the mixture too much or knead too much, the cookies will not be as light.

To proceed :

You can either roll and cut the cookies or slice them.

If planning to roll, divide the dough into 4 portions. Flatten each portion into a square, wrap in cling film and chill overnight or at least 2 hours.

The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen well wrapped at this point.

To make slice and bake cookies (this is easier), divide the dough into 4 portions and roll into logs. Wrap in cling film and chill overnight or at least for 2-3 hours. It is much easier to work with a well-chilled dough.

Bake the cookies

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C / 375 degrees F.

Line your cookies sheets with baking parchment

You can also use ungreased cookie trays. The dough has quite a lot of butter and oil from the walnuts so the release will not be a problem.

Take one log out at a time, using a sharp knife, slice 1/4″ apart. Push a coffee bean firmly in the center of each cookie. If your cookies do not get a good round shape when sliced, just shape it holding it gently but firmly and shape it against your palm)

Place the cookies 1 inch apart

If rolling, take one portion of the dough. If it is too firm to roll easily, leave it on the counter for 10 minutes. Keep the dough between two sheets of parchment and roll evenly using gentle pressure. I have rolled my dough fairly thin, about 5mm.

Cut the cookies into shapes, transfer to the baking sheet. Re-roll the scraps and use, chilling in between as needed.

If you have to use flour on the counter to roll the cookies, use just a light dusting or the cookies will be dry.

Bake for about 10-12 minutes till the cookies are light brown in color. Bake a test batch of 2 cookies, that will tell you the approximate baking time.

Your house will now be smelling gorgeous, filled with the aroma of coffee and butter. So, the cookies may get you sudden visiting neighbors ;-)

The baking time may vary slightly depending on the thickness of the cookies and your oven. Try to keep the cookies size uniform and keep watching closely for the first batch.

The cookies will feel slightly soft (but not too soft) when they are done. They will continue to cook and harden slightly on the cookie tray when removed from the oven, so take care not to overbake or they will become too hard.

Once the cookies are done, remove the tray from the oven, allow the cookies to cool on the tray for a minute. Once cool, gently remove from the tray.

Cool completely on cookie racks. Store in airtight tins.

These cookies are supposed to stay good for a month. Well, we may not be able to test this at all as its highly unlikely that these cookies will remain uneaten for so long!

Watch my video on grinding nuts.

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24 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Aaaah, if I were your neighbour, you'd certainly have me coming over to your house all the time, on silly pretexts! Who wouldnt want you as their neighbour now? ;)The cookies look really delightful, and Im sure they taste out-of-this-world. Should try them sooner. Im sure they'd also make lovely X'mas giveaways no? :)

Cookies known for their taste while eating, coffee known for the taste which lingers after having it. This COFFEE WALLNET COOKIE brings out a combination of both. This I am telling after tasting it a few mins back.

I love coffee too. Only problem is I can't sleep very well when I drink it nowadays. Cookies look awesome. This is pretty much the same formula as pie dough recipe/ tart crust recipe. You can change it to your flavor so easily that it is indeed a versatile recipe. Thanks for the entry.

Made these Suma.. they came out well... made one batch right after making the dough - at 11 pm, during a couple of ad breaks between a movie :) Shaped them with hand and baked, and the first batch was just polished off even before the movie ended :D Made another batch out of the log in fridge... loved it... Thanks a ton!

The cookies are really good, have them on a rainy day with a big glass of warm milk.... super delicious. I tried them with a few more dry fruits; cashew nuts and even dried figs... though they were a mistake since it was very tough to cut through the dough.... nevertheless, really great cookies.